February 09, 2012

One of the proven ways to build one’s online brand presence is to be active in industry forums, social media and other’s blogs. This activity usually takes the form of making thoughtful and compelling comments – not blatant advertising of one’s product or service. Best practice recommends that to really build online brand presence one must always include a link back to the company blog or website when posting said comments.

Understandably, after a few dozen comments it becomes difficult to keep track of all the blogs, forums and social media pages upon which one commented in an effort to monitor the ongoing conversations so that online brand presence can continue to be built. Since this is a universal problem several new programs are available online to do that job exactly. Below are a few programs that will make monitoring one’s online brand presence incredibly easy so that time and energy can be spent on more important components of creating and maintaining a business’s online brand presence.

Backtype – This is great for monitoring blog comments across the web. Once one comments on a blog and includes a link to their blog or website Backtype will update any new activity on the blog saving time and energy. This service can also be used to monitor trends and discussion in one’s industry which comes in useful for the company blog.

Google Alerts – One can now tame the search engine giant by setting up Google Alerts which notify one when a pre-entered phrase or business name is mentioned any where on the internet whether that be in a blog, forum or article. This is great for monitoring a business’s online brand presence.

Twitter Search – For those small business’s investing their online marketing time on Twitter keeping up with all the Tweets can be exhausting. Enter Twitter Search. One can search for all the instances a company’s name is mentioned in a tweet and then choose to respond or not respond. One of the keys to maintaining online brand presence is constant communication. Tools like Twitter Search help keep one on top of social media.

Friend Feed – Similar to Twitter Search this tool helps businesses keep an eye on all social media activity that mentions the business name. An ongoing log is presented that pulls from all the major social media sites. The temptation with a tool such as this is to spend as much time monitoring Friend Feed as one would the individual sites which doesn’t really save time or increase online brand presence.